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Race: Draconian

Bloodline Powers: Improved Strength+, Rending, Firebreath+

Greater Mysteries: Fire (Noble) 6, Wind (Noble) 4, Sound (Advanced) 2

Lesser Mysteries: Heat 4, Oxygen 4, Embers 4, Pressure 4, Current/Flow 4

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“Welcome to the first longhouse of Union City,” Samazzar said grandly, waving a hand at the rough wood beams of the building. “It isn’t much, but it’s a beginning.”

“It isn’t much what?” Barsa asked from his side. “Much of a house? Much of a city? Whatever it is, it certainly isn’t very long. You dragged me out where with honeyed words about all the progress you’ve made, and here we are, meeting in the half constructed wooden shell of a real building.”

Samazzar’s smile barely faltered. Half of the building was open to the night air and construction material covered the unvarnished wood floor. Behind Barsa and him a cluster of kobolds milled around, looking at the unfinished building skeptically.

“You see a half completed building,” Samazzar replied, walking over to where Dussok and him had dragged in a large flat stone to serve as a table. “I see the foundation for our new society. It isn’t done, but that’s because it needs all of our hands and claws to help shape and form it. The longhouse is a metaphor for what we are constructing here. Unfinished, but with all of us working together and adding our own unique talents to the mix, it could be something great.”

“Maybe,” Barsa said dubiously. “Still looks mostly like an unfinished building to me.”

Tazzaera cackled, shaking her head as she walked toward her seat around the table. Her cane tumped on the uneven wood of the floor as she moved, and her voice carried on the cool night breeze.

“I like this one little dragon. Keep him around. Every ruler needs two or three people by their sides that aren’t afraid to call them an idiot. Otherwise you end up suffocating on your own pride like Duromak.”

“Very true,” Samazzar agreed, sweeping into the half-constructed room and taking his stool at the far end of the table. “I’m a dreamer. I see things how they should be, how they will be. I need sober individuals to ground me, to make sure that my dreams are actually enacted and that our people don’t suffer while we make them come to fruition.”

Dussok and Takkla followed him in, taking seats on either side of Samazzar and Tazzaera. Behind them, the rest of the chiefs and shamans filed in. Quietly finding their spots around the table as they looked at Samazzar expectantly.

He opened his mouth to begin the meeting only to pause. The chief sitting next to Dussok had his arm in a sling and an absolutely foolish smile on his face.

“Chief Bronn,” Samazzar began. “You appear to be injured, but my siblings reported that there weren’t any major difficulties in convincing all three tribes to join us.”

“It wasn’t a difficulty highchief Samazzar!” The kobold practically shouted, a female shaman holding a small cage full of crickets at his side looking on with a pained expression. “I challenged Warrior Dussok to a contest of strength, a bare clawed brawl. I lost, but it was glorious.”

“Are you sure that was a good idea?” Samazzar asked carefully, eyes flicking from Bronn to Dussok. “I know you’re big for a kobold, but Dussok is well-”

“He’s the size of a mountain,” the kobold chief’s eyes gleamed. “Why do you think I demanded a battle with him? I knew there was no way I would win, but I had to try. How could you not look at someone that powerful and not want to test their strength?”

“Dussok?” His attention didn’t leave the grinning kobold.

“Errr,” the giant draconian rumbled sheepishly. “I tried to take it easily on Bronn. Slow sweeping attacks that tried to knock him out of the ring. He kept bouncing back up and demanding that I stop treating him like a pup so I might have lost my temper a little bit.”

“And?” Samazzar should have been frustrated or upset with Dussok, but he just felt tired. There was something about their new companion’s manic enthusiasm that made him suspect that he deserved whatever the draconian had done to him.

“I, uh,” Dussok began, pausing for a second in visible embarrassment. “I might have grabbed him by the shoulders and punted him. He sailed about ten paces and landed outside of the ring, hurting his arm in the fall.”

“Glorious.” Bronn whispered, eyes and teeth shining in the moonlight as his grin spread almost unnaturally far across his muzzle.

Samazzar simply smiled at the fervent kobold, shooting Dussok a worried look. His sibling shrugged, just as lost as he was.

“Great I guess,” Samazzar hazarded. The shaman next to Bronn closed her eyes, slumping into her seat. There was a story there, but not one that he had the mental capacity to deal with at the moment. “Regardless, I am glad that everyone was willing to join our joint endeavor here without the ugliness and loss of combat. At the end of the day, all of us share the blood of dragons. Cousin should not spill the blood of cousin. All four of our tribes should be working together to make a brighter future together.”

Barsa nodded slowly, chewing his lower lip thoughtfully. Across the table, Bronn kept beaming happily at Dussok who was looking progressively more and more uncomfortable. At the far end, the final contingent, a female chief and shaman sat impassively.

“Now that we have all gathered together,” Samazzar continued, ignoring the strange mood that was setting in, “the first step is survival. Our people need to be alive to implement the new techniques that my siblings and I have brought from human lands. For that, I need to know more about your tribes. How they have survived up until now and what skills they bring to the table.”

No one spoke. Samazzar looked around the table, but none of the chiefs was willing to volunteer to break the silence. Finally, the corners of his smile twitching slightly from strain, Samazzar gave in.

“Barsa, since we’re already acquainted, you can go first.”

The kobold coughed once, slightly embarrassed at being called out, but Samazzar didn’t have much pity for him. Unless he had broken the silence, there was no doubt in his mind that the three chiefs were content to stew around the table indefinitely.

“Err,” Barsa replied, reaching up to rub the back of his neck. “Name’s Barsa. High Chief Samazzar told us he’s been calling our group the Dirt Gulch tribe and that’s as good a name as any. Our group has about forty kobolds, most of them workers or gatherers. We live in burrows. All of us are good at digging and foraging for herbs, roots and nuts. A couple of them know how to make small snares for catching rabbits and frogs, but it’s a work in progress. They usually only catch something about once a week.”

“Long term,” he continued with a shrug, “We know how to farm a little bit, but it’s mostly wood grass. It doesn’t grow all that quickly, and not much of it is edible, only a bit of the root that you have to grind up into a powder and mix with water until it turns into a paste. It’s foul stuff, but it’s kept the tribe from starving more than once over the last couple of winters.”

“Thank you,” Samazzar said. “We should be able to put your people to good use digging foundations and root cellars for the houses we will be putting in. You should also make sure to bring some of that wood grass. Unless I miss my bet, if we’re able to leaven and cook it, it might turn into something a bit more filling and palatable.

“I don’t see why not,” Barsa replied. “Course, a bunch of the tribe will groan once they see we’re planting it again. I’m not kidding when I say it tastes awful.”

“Noted,” Samazzar responded dryly, before turning his gaze to Bronn, the chief was holding in a deep breath, trying to puff out his chest to make him look bigger than he was. Despite the kobold’s best effort, he still wasn’t as big as any of the draconians, even Takkla.

“I am Bronn,” he wheezed, trying his hardest to keep his breath in while talking. “Dussok called us Mineral Spring tribe, and since he won our contest that’s our name.”

Next to Samazzar, he felt Dussok stiffen. The big draconian was looking anywhere but at the kobold chief beaming up at him. Somehow, despite winning his fight with the smaller reptile, Samazzar felt more pity for Dussok than the tribe that they had forced into their fold.

“Our tribe is good at surviving,” Bronn continued proudly. “All of us can swim. The entrances to our caves are located under the water, and predators can’t find us down there. My shaman, Rosyl, knows how to bake the clay from the banks of the pond so that it will harden like stone. Ever since she started treating our mud caves, collapses have almost completely stopped.”

The female shaman sitting next to Bronn sighed.

“There are about sixty of us,” she said softly, “but the number fluctuates often. We live mostly off of grubs, carrion and snails so disease is always a problem. Occasionally the crickets will lead me to some downed game, but it usually has been out in the sun for some time.”

“Honestly,” Rosyl finished, finally opening her eyes and giving all of them a tired smile. “It’s a good thing that Dussok defeated Bronn. Not many in our tribe managed to make it past eight summers before disease or malnutrition do us in. If your human methods can even save ten percent of our people, I’ll be happy to toil away doing whatever it is you need for the rest of my life.”

Across the table, the female chief snorted, but Samazzar ignored her.

“We won’t need anything that drastic,” he replied. “The goal of Union City is to create something new. I’ve seen how the humans run things, and as great as their works and civilizations are, they spend almost as much time struggling against each other as they do outside forces. Here, the goal is mutual strength. We will work together to give every resident the opportunity to grow stronger. That means stopping the useless death and cowardice that has plagued our race until now. Even without your asking, I would have tried to save your tribe from its conditions.”

Rosyl settled back down into her seat, shoulder slumping as all the tension left her body at once, leaving barely any strength to hold her upright.

“See,” Bronn said happily. “I told you that anyone strong enough to tell Dussok what to do would be strong enough to fix the problems with the tribe. You just need to learn to trust me. After all, I’m pretty strong myself.”

The shaman didn’t even react, but the last of her willpower just faded away, leaving her all but boneless as her body became one with her chair.

“And for the final group?” Samazzar asked, his voice trailing off as he made eye contact with the female chief.

“I am Wessla of the Green Cliff tribe.” Her voice was clipped, matter of fact as she glared a challenge back at Samazzar. “There are only thirty of us, but every female is a huntress. Takkla has proven herself to be the superior huntress and archer, so she is our rightful chief, but that does not mean we will go back to being brood mares and child rearers quietly. The women of our tribe suffered under male rule for generations until Matriarch Gesson overthrew the last male chief. Now we live free and we will die free if necessary.”

Samazzar just blinked at her.

“If you try to force us to put down our bows, we will fight to the death,” she continued, setting her jaw as her eyes blazed. “You may win the war, but your prize will be nothing but ash. We will drag as many attackers-”

“Why would I want to take you away from hunting?” Samazzar asked, cocking his head slightly to the side. “That’s a valuable skill, something most kobolds lack. Right now it’s hard to keep my own tribe working for more than a couple hours a day unless it directly involves them getting fed or beaten, and I’ve been trying to cut down on the beatings. If you are bringing fifteen huntresses that can be trusted to seek and hunt game on their own, that automatically puts them in the top five to ten percent of the most useful citizens in the new city.”

“But,” Wessla stuttered, derailed by Samazzar’s response. “Males always seek to denigrate and overpower women. The teachings of Matriarch Gesson are firm on that point. It’s impossible for a male to see a woman as anything but a pretty tail and a clutch of eggs.”

Samazzar opened his mouth to say something before closing it again. Wessla looked lost, but she was also speaking with the zealousness of a true believer. Stating that he wasn’t interested in the tail of any female kobold wouldn’t exactly calm her down. Rather, it would probably just make the entire situation worse.

Finally, he shrugged.

“Crone Tazzaera, have I ever treated you as lessor because of your sex?”

“No,” the old kobold said with a snort, “and I would have started your tail on fire if you tried. You know better than to engage in that sort of foolishness. Your snout was so far up in the clouds that you wouldn’t even notice when female kobolds had crushes on you. Frankly, it made me wonder about you sometimes.”

“What!” Samazzar blurted out, his prepared response disappearing as he whipped his head around. “What do you mean I didn’t notice that female kobolds had crushes on me? None of that ever happened!”

“See,” Tazzaera cackled, winking at Wessla, “he’s no threat to you because he barely realizes that you’re female. Problem solved.”

“No.” Samazzar waved his hands back and forth. “You are not going to dodge this line of conversation. I need to know what you meant by female kobolds having crushes on me. I swear that I never noticed anything of the sort growing up!”

The crone didn’t reply, instead sinking back into her seat, cane balanced across her legs with a smug smile on her face.

“That brings us on to our next order of business,” Takkla interjected, ignoring Samazzar’s agitation. “We have some simple crops planted and with the addition of wood grass, we will likely have more to plant in the coming months, but what we lack is a source of meat.”

“Is everyone going to pretend that Tazzaera didn’t say that?” Samazzar asked frantically, looking from Takkla to Dussok and back to Tazzaera again. “You can’t just drop revelations like that and just go on without explanation!”

“Samazzar, Dussok, and I have talked,” Takkla continued smoothly. “There are some mountain goats living on the east face of the mountain. It will take some doing to tame them, but the first step is to capture them and bring them back to the camp. I would suggest that Samazzar and myself make the trip along with some members from the Green Cliff tribe. Eight people total should be about right to capture enough breeding pairs to start a flock.”

“No one is going to tell me, are they?” Samazzar said with a groan. “This is just going to turn into one of those things isn’t it?

Across the table, Wessla’s stern expression cracked for the first time, a hint of a smile tugging at the corner of her muzzle.

“I will talk to my huntresses,” she replied evenly, “we can find six of our most skilled trackers and net wielders to accompany you.”